things I have learnt about sex and dating

Thank god for Lena Dunham. The girl has arrived and shown how jolly difficult and perilous dating and sex can be in your twenties. I’m nearly 26 and have been single since I was 18. I’ve had my fair share of dating disasters. Some of them have been heart-breaking, some hilarious but they all have one thing in common. I HAVE LEARNT from them. I am A WISE WOMAN. Seriously. Here’s a few things I have so far learnt from me and my friends and our combined dating experiences.

Dates are just an exercise in keeping the other person talking. If you win at that, you’ll probably get a second one.

Sex should generally be a joke-free zone. Unless they are Kings Of Banter, gentlemen will rarely appreciate you singing the opening of R.Kelly’s ‘Bump and Grind’ at the crucial moment of no return. “MA MIIIIIIND’S TELLIN ME NOOOOOOO BUT MA BODY, MA BODYYYY IS TELLIN ME YESSSS”. In my head, hilarious. In their head, mood-killing. Who knew?!

Be careful when trying to set up a romantic atmosphere for sex. Candles are open flames at the end of the day. If you DO happen to set fire to the bed by accident, the best way to deal with it, is undoubtedly to get your lover to ball the duvet up and hug it to put the fire out, whilst you dispel the awkwardness by saying something along the lines of, “Wow…our sex must have been red hot to literally set the bed alight…”

If a girl says no, it means no. It does not mean, ‘because I am being coy please feel free to have a stealth wank and then, ahem, spunk up my back’. I can pretty much guarantee that girls won’t like that. (p.s sorry for saying spunk.)

Turns out, if you wet yourself on a night out because you are so unfeasibly drunk, sometimes a nice man will take you out on a few dates despite having seen you in such a mortifyingly embarrassing state.

In that awkward moment where everything pauses whilst a gentlemen puts a condom on, do not sing. In fact, let’s just say as a rule, don’t sing at any point of a sexual experience.

If a guy is putting his best moves on you, and accidentally backrolls off the bed into his wash-basket, don’t laugh at him.

Guys, if you go on the flop, don’t worry! It happens! Girls honestly don’t care. Unless you blame it on them not being fit enough. While she’s lying there. Naked. Please don’t do that.

Everyone claims to hate ‘Game-Playing’. This isn’t true. In a dating situation, if one person is playing the game, then you have to play it back. Otherwise you get well mugged off. PLAY THE GAME OR GET PLAYED. (But seriously, it’s knackering! Why do you lot like it? Isn’t it less stress just to be honest? WHAT A CRAZY CONCEPT!)

THERE IS NO SEXY WAY TO TAKE TIGHTS OFF BELIEVE ME I HAVE TRIED AND I HAVE FAILED

If you spend more time in beds with gay men than straight men, it’s maybe time to rethink your dating strategy.

Never bid farewell to a handsome chap at the end of an evening by clasping his face and singing ‘Somewhere’ from West-Side Story at the top of your lungs. I can 100% guarantee he won’t find it funny. Unless perhaps he is one of the aforementioned gay men.

Dirty talk is great, but very tricky to get right. It does not mean locking eyes with a man as he enters you and whispering ‘WELCOME’.

Nothing feels as good as when an old flame makes a clanging grammar error on a social networking site. HAHAHAHA it’s THEIR not THEY’RE YOU BLITHERING IDIOT.

If you have made the effort to wear lovely matching underwear, it is definitely okay to demand that your sexual partner turns the lights back on to have a good look at said underwear before they take it off. COME ON MAN, MY BOOBS ARE AS HIGH AS AN ELEPHANT’S EYE.

Just FYI men: Not all of us single women are mental, clingy creatures. If we text you first, it doesn’t mean we want you to put a ring on it, so don’t always predictably freak out so much. More often than not it just means we’d like to go for a drink with you and maybe have a bit of sex. So chill out alright?

Frankly, I think dating is a bit like being on the Crystal Maze. You never know which zone you’re going to end up in, it’s all about timing, it takes both logic and physical skills and is often a mystery. Sometimes you win challenges and sometimes you lose them, but hopefully you can always count on your friends to bail you out.

[…] little romantically bruised but altogether more wiser, and incidentally which allowed me to share what I’ve learned about sex and dating, my musings on online dating and provided me with more material for my upcoming Valentines show, […]